William Gilmore Simms spoke at the opening of the
Spartanburg Female College at approximately 1pm[1]
on August 22, 1855 to an audience comprised largely of the Board of Trustees
and other persons involved in the founding of that institution[2]. His remarks were published several weeks
later in a pamphlet entitled Inauguration
of the Spartanburg Female College. His
talk focused on the two related topics of the value of education in general and
the importance of female education specifically. On the former, Simms compared the mind of man
to a wilderness terrain awaiting ...